Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:

Go to Start

Click Settings

Click Control Panel

Double-click Add/Remove Programs

Click the Add/Remove Window Components

Uncheck the Indexing services

Click Next

2. Optimise Display Settings

Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:

Go to Start

Click Settings

Click Control Panel

Click System

Click Advanced tab

In the Performance tab click Settings

Leave only the following ticked:

Show shadows under menus

Show shadows under mouse pointer

Show translucent selection rectangle

Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop

Use visual styles on windows and buttons

3. Speedup Folder Browsing

You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

Click Network Adapter and choose the interface you use to connect to the Internet

Check Optimal Settings then Apply

Reboot

7. Optimise Your Pagefile

If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.

Right click on My Computer and select Properties

Select the Advanced tab

Under Performance choose the Settings button

Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change

Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

Upon reboot, BootVis will automatically start, analyze and log your system’s boot process. When it’s done, in the menu go to Trace and select Optimize System

Reboot.

When your machine has rebooted wait until you see the Optimizing System box appear. Be patient and wait for the process to complete

9. Remove the Desktop Picture

Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.

Right click on Desktop and select Properties

Select the Desktop tab

In the Background window select None

Click Ok

10. Remove Fonts for Speed

Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.

Open Control Panel

Open Fonts folder

Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.

Hope you find these 10 tips useful please leave a comment below and please share any other tips you may have with other readers.